How to Find Out What Else I'm Qualified to Do
Formal qualifications are not the only way in which you're qualified for different careers. When you choose a new direction, take into account your life and work experiences, passions, hobbies, learned skills and natural strengths as well as academic or vocational qualifications. By reflecting on all these qualifications, you can narrow down your search to a particular role or career that suits you. Once you have this clarity, you can target and focus on positions that you know you will be qualified to do.
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Instructions
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Identifying Your Qualifications
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Ask yourself which tasks and activities you've gotten better over time at doing, what you enjoy doing and what people ask you to do. Identify the different skills you use in each of these activities to get a clearer picture of your skill set.
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Bring to mind your passions and interests by asking yourself what you would like to be doing right now.
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Ask people who know you well what they believe your strengths and passions are. Those around you can't give you all the answers, but external opinions can give you fresh insight.
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Reread a past work appraisal to pick out key words and phrases regarding what your talents and qualities are.
Identifying Suitable Jobs
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Off the top of your head, come up with careers that are suited to combinations of your different formal qualifications, strengths, experiences and interests. For example, if you have a diploma in communications, one of your natural strengths is your attention to detail, you have experience as a junior tennis player and you enjoy being outdoors, you could be a tennis umpire, courtside reporter or sports photographer. Write down the careers you think of.
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Use a search engine to look up online information on each career you've written down. Do offline research by borrowing and reading relevant books from your local library.
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Do some voluntary work within the career areas you believe suit you the most. This gives you more of an idea of whether the work would suit you in the long term. Find suitable voluntary opportunities by visiting websites such as http://www.charities.org/
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Talk to people in your personal and professional networks with experience in the career areas you're still interested in. Ask them what strengths successful people within the profession usually have.
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Use all the information and knowledge you've gathered to choose one career path or type of job to pursue. By narrowing your options down to one, you'll be able to singularly focus all your energy and effort on securing a role in that particular field.
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References
Resources
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